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Back The Night of the Flood
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1954
  7. PART 1
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. 5.
  13. 6.
  14. 7.
  15. 8.
  16. 9.
  17. PART 2
  18. 1.
  19. 2.
  20. 3.
  21. 4.
  22. 5.
  23. 6.
  24. 7.
  25. 8.
  26. 9.
  27. 10.
  28. PART 3
  29. 1.
  30. 2.
  31. 3.
  32. 4.
  33. 5.
  34. 6.
  35. 7.
  36. PART 4
  37. 1.
  38. 2.
  39. 3.
  40. 4.
  41. 5.
  42. 6.
  43. 7.
  44. 8.
  45. 9.
  46. 10.
  47. 11.
  48. 1954
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the author
  51. An Invitation from the Publisher

‘Don’t talk like that, Arthur, it ent going to change anything. Anyway, I came in to say thank you, so there you are.’

She raised her eyebrows at him and put her little finger into her mouth to bite her nail and there was a kind of challenge in it that made his stomach twist.

‘What are we going to do now that’s done? No use feeling sorry for ourselves, is there? There’s worse off than us.’ She had finished her tea and was stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray, looking at him so directly he could see himself reflected in the pools of her stare. He blinked and tried to take a sip from his now empty cup, then put it down again. He closed his eyes and saw himself kissing her red mouth. He swallowed, amazed at the thought of it. With Blowers and her being cousins, he ought to keep clear. But then everyone was related in this tight-knit, suffocating place. And he’d had enough of being alone in his head and here she was, an offering.

‘You want to go somewhere?’ Her voice came from a long way away.

He looked up and realised what she was saying. ‘I – I—’

She was a blur of green. He could hardly think. He saw Verity’s ghost-like face when she’d seen Jack’s body and he wanted to get it out of his head.

‘Where?’ he said, as if that was important.

She laughed and shrugged. ‘You’ll work it out.’

‘Fine,’ he said, and if it sounded as flippant as he thought, she didn’t seem to mind. She smiled with conspiracy and he noticed the way her lipstick bled at the corners of her mouth.

How they got to the shop he couldn’t say; it was as if he was propelled there by something other than his own legs. She put her hand into his and it was small and burning hot. What if someone saw them? His body was a foreign thing, a jumble of nerve-endings only. He felt her pulse throbbing against his too-big hands and imagined tracing a line up her arm to the breasts beneath her coat.

At the door he couldn’t look at her. He held his finger to his lips. Upstairs there was silence. Through the grey shadows of the ruins of the shop he led her through to the storeroom and, with the key he kept in his pocket, locked the door.